Water - it fascinates us, terrifies us, soothes us, feeds us, heals us, teaches us, carries us, and cleanses us. We have no way to escape water. A whopping 71% of the earths surface is covered by water, although we seem to do our best to shrink that number. The cycle of water trickling up to the surface or falling from the heavens is always active somewhere on earth. Rain, snow, ice, steam, and springs are constant reminders of the waters around us. There is also water within us, with an average of 65% of the human body being composed of water.
Water holds significance in nearly every time, place, and peoples. The ancient Egyptians lived their life around the river. The calendar was set by the Nile's two floods each year. Their entire economy and survival depended on the rivers provision for the fertile land and transport of goods and people. The Nile was and is the source of life.
Floor tiling map of the Nile - Zippori, Israel
The world was conquered by one civilization after another based on their proximity to water, their mastery of its life giving properties through irrigation of its courses, the collecting and successful retention of water in desert lands, the navigation of rivers and the conquering of the seas, the stabilization and redirection of its mighty power through mills and dams and turbines to harness its potential, and the violent restriction of water to ones enemy. A communities vitality or destruction all through out history can be connected to its relationship with water. The new frontier to other planets and comets and stars is obsessed with the search for water. Without water there is no life.
Even mythological and historical biblical texts center on themes of water more than any other natural element.
OLD TESTAMENT REFERENCES
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1-2
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelite's went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.
Exodus 14:21-23
But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
2 Kings 5:13-14
For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.
Jeremiah 2:13
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, *
and though the mountains be toppled into the
depths of the sea;
Though its waters rage and foam, *
and though the mountains tremble at its tumult.
The LORD of hosts is with us; *
the God of Jacob is our stronghold.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, *
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her;
she shall not be overthrown; *
God shall help her at the break of day.
Psalm 46:1-6
The Gihon Spring which runs beneath the city of Jerusalem
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Amos 5:24
NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES
And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A windstorm arose on the sea, so great that boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" And he said to them, "Why are you afraid, you of little faith?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, "What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?"
Matthew 8:23-27
The shore of the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans." Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
John 4:7-14
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"
John 7:37-38
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:1-2
Today I have been catching up on some reading for classes and all of my readings today had to do with baptism in some way. Baptism is the full Christian rite of initiation into the community of faith, into the body of Christ and into his royal priesthood. The waters of baptism represent for us the chaos beyond created order. It represents the passing of time, of death and rebirth. It is both the waters of birth such as amniotic fluid, and death, in the encapsulation of the grave. It is simultaneously washing away the old life, and anointing us in newness of life.
The traditional site of the baptism of Jesus by John in the River Jordan
All this conversation about water and baptism, its properties, its symbol, its tangible, visible, and aural power, has me thinking about three major events concerning the lack of water which I have witnessed this year. 1- Water restrictions of Palestinians by the Israeli government, 2- The poisoned waters offered for public consumption in Flint, Michigan, and 3- the protests and crisis at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.
In the United States, the plight of the people of Flint, Michigan and other US cities as been brought to the national spotlight. The waters are poisoned either through over fracking or lax laws and corrupt governments who only perpetuate the disease of systematic poverty by ignoring one of the most vital aspects of life on earth.
And most recently, the Native peoples of the America's who were deposed and deported, lied to, massacred, and forgotten, have not forgotten their connection to the land from which we are all given life. As the corrupt corporations push us into a cycle of dependence on fossil fuels and we yet ignore the signs of permanent damage we are doing to creation, these people are standing up and saying enough. They are standing with the river, protecting the waters. The waters are sacred. The waters are the source of life.
Baptismal font and pool in the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint George in East Jerusalem
We as Christians are a people of Baptism. It is in our baptism that we are born, in which we are given our identity. It is in those living waters that we are also made one with each other, all members incorporate of the body of Christ. In the Episcopal Church we reaffirm the vows of our baptismal covenant every time we celebrate the initiation of a new member of our body. If we are wise will will wake up every morning, as Bishop Dean J. Neil Alexander has put it "trying to survive our baptism," and living out our covenant in everything that we do. In that covenant we make certain promises to recognize God in all creation, to love and serve one another, and to proclaim the Good News. All this we promise to do, with God's help.
If we forget about the water, if we allow ourselves to dry up and wonder in the wilderness grumbling, then we have failed in our vows. We are born of the water. We are washed in the waves. We have even come through some storms. If the water of life swells within us, gushing from our hearts, don't you think it should pour out on all creation. Anthropologically we have spent our history attempting to conquer, master, and direct the seas, and have only succeeded in hording, poisoning, and losing the stream. Go and speak with the sound of the roaring waves which crash within you. Pour out the gushing spring, allow the spirit of God to drown you and those around you.
Soothe! Quench! Heal! Teach! Carry! and Cleanse! And perhaps as God has said through the Prophet Amos, we shall see justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
